1. Field of the Invention
This invention introduces two distinct dodecahedron cubic puzzles. Each puzzle is comprised of various pieces which rotate in groups around lines joining the puzzle center and the puzzle vertices. Admissible rotations alter the surface configurations. The object and the challenge is to perform twists and turns aimed at restoring the surfaces to their original configuration or to other interesting configurations.
2. Description of the Prior Art
This invention introduces dodecahedron cubic puzzles which generalize cubic puzzles similar to those introduced in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 687,141 Filing Date 12/28/1984. One of the new puzzles is a dodecahedron cubic puzzle based on standard regular dodecahedron shapes with twelve identical regular pentagon plane faces. A second puzzle introduced here has the more interesting shape of a rhombic dodecahedron with twelve diamond faces, the same shape as that given in FIG. 9c of U.S. Pat. No. 4,593,907.
The regular dodecahedron cubic puzzles of the prior art have each of their pivots or axes of rotation (which emanate from the puzzles core central parts) pointing towards or being attached to centers or center pieces of an external plane face; consequently planes of rotation for the regular dodecahedron puzzles of the prior art are parallel to the plane faces of the underlying dodecahedrons. Here planes of rotation are orthogonal to straight lines which join vertices of the dodecahedrons to the geometric centers of the puzzles and proper rotations of groups of regular polyhedron puzzle component pieces are always around straight lines which join a vertex (a corner point) and the geometric center of the overall dodecahedron shape. Consequently, corner pieces of the dodecahedron puzzles introduced here are restricted to actually and physically rotate in place. Corner component pieces can rotate together with their surrounding edge pieces.